From the archive, 12 October 1963: Cocteau dies on news of Piaf's death

Jean Cocteau, writer, film producer, and painter, died in his home at Milly, near Paris, today aged 73. The death of Cocteau at one o'clock today seems to have been directly linked with that of Edith Piaf, the popular singer, who died at seven in the morning in a Paris nursing home. A representative of the Paris State Radio, who was also a friend of Jean Cocteau, rang him up to ask him if he felt well enough to take part in the commemoration of Edith Piaf's death in some form on the air.

M. Cocteau was convalescing after a severe heart attack earlier in the summer, but had resumed working and was, in fact, this morning engaged on drafting a new stage set for "Pelléas and Mélisande."

Jean Cocteau replied that he had had an extremely bad feverish night and had a temperature. He had felt last night that his unease was due to the death of some near and dear friend. Now he knew this was Edith Piaf. He then added that he felt the same stifling sensation as when he had his original heart attack. A few minutes later he was dead.

Although he was born in 1889, Jean Cocteau never ceased to strike the amazed public as a young writer. There were several reasons for this – he had the all-round quality of versatility more common to the writer trying his hand everywhere than to the established man.

His friendships covered the whole artistic world of France – and of much of the world – and often reverberated into the newspapers. He explored the ballet, conquered the films and kept up a stream of freshness (though not always a refreshing stream) in the modern French theatre.

He was not, on the whole, a dramatist whose work was likely to last or was even designed to last. Where it typified the hopes and fears of his times it did so by brilliance rather than by depth. The classical tradition in the French theatre fascinated him, as it has done writers from one generation to another, so in his list of works are adaptations of an Antigone, an Oedipus, and an Orpheus.

He distributed his talents almost equally between the stage and the screen in his later years, and sometimes it appeared that if he had concentrated them both in form and in subject his mark would have been a firmer one.

But his humour was sharp enough, his use of a dream-world solid enough to ensure that his plays and films would never be dull even when they were difficult.

Darsie Gillie

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